|
|
|
TROPICAL RAINFORESTS: Saving What Remains
|
|
About this site
Providing tropical forest news, statistics, photos, and information, rainforests.mongabay.com is the world's most popular rainforest site. [more] |
|
|
|
The Mauritius Kestrel
The Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, 500 miles east of Madagascar (off the east African coast), has been severely
affected by forest loss. Once home to the famous dodo, the island's wildlife is some of the most endangered in
the world. One species, the Mauritius kestrel, a small falcon, has been brought back from the edge of extinction.
The Mauritius kestrel suffered from habitat loss, the
introduction of monkeys and mongooses which ate its eggs, hunting as a pest, and widespread spraying of DDT. By
1973, the world population of the Mauritius kestrel was down to six birds. The situation was so grim that in 1979,
the International Council for Bird Preservation sent Carl Jones to shut down the effort to save the bird. Luckily
for the kestrel, Jones refused to follow orders. He developed a breeding program and brought the species from
the verge of extinction to more than 200 wild birds in the early 1990s.
Continued: Saving rainforests
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
|
|
|
|
|
Recent news
Amazon deforestation rate falls to lowest on record
(8/10/2007) Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon for the previous year were the lowest on record, according to preliminary figures released by INPE, Brazil's National Institute of Space Research.
Lowland rainforest less diverse than previously thought
(8/9/2007) While rainforests are the world's libraries of biodiversity, species richness may be more evenly distributed in some forests than in others, reports an extensive new study by an international team of entomologists and botanists. The work, published in the current issue of the journal Nature, has important implications for forest management and conservation strategies.
Experts: parks effectively protect rainforest in Peru
(8/9/2007) High-resolution satellite monitoring of the Amazon rainforest in Peru shows that land-use and conservation policies have had a measurable impact on deforestation rates. The research is published in the August 9, 2007, on-line edition of Science Express.
More rainforest news
|
|
|
